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So according to my trusty camera it is day 47 of the trip and to be entirely honest it feels like day 3 or 4, except maybe the confidence that i think it took me a few weeks to garner with respect to dealing with any type of business transaction, con-men, peddlers, beggars and every other individual that seems to cross your path in africa with not quite a "genuine interest" in one...In saying that in general and can now say with the utmost confidence that the african people are wonderful, friendly and more often than not a very genuine people. At least that is my view thus far. Thus far being confined to Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda.I have now left Uganda for the last time in the trip, after a total of 3 entries, exits and re-entries and I must say I am pretty sad to have left.
Since I wrote last I have obviously since well left the orphanage. In fact unbelievably again it has been nearly 3 weeks since I left it. When the time did finally come i was an incredibly bittersweet moment - I had the next leg of my trip to look forward to, would be meeting up with Sid (who i hadn't seen in over a year) but i had a huge sense of a time unfulfilled or something...I guess i think that it took me the guts of 4 weeks to really understand KAASO, and as mentioned above, the Ugandan people. I think i couldhave offered so much more in a second month, but due to a few mix ups it wasn't to be. If I had to sum up what i got out of the whole experience it would be to further enhance my view that a lot of the western world materialistic bulls*** is just that. Most of the people i met have no possessions except the clothes on their back and the food in their garden, and yet they are happier and more content than 4/5 people in our "advanced" western world. They have friends and family (though unfortunatley not in all cases) and that is all that matters at the end of the day - is it not? Anyway enough of that deep stuff, on to what has been going on since I left! Oh, just one more thing to say and that is from the bottom of my heart thanks so much to everyone who gave anything to KAASO. You have genuinely helped enrichen so many kids's day-to-day lives and help their overall chances in life that you simply have no idea...
Yeah, so after an emotional farewell - and an individual concert to thank me for my time there and wish me good travels by the P7's (very very embarrassing but thankfully no dancing this time around!!!) I headed north to Murchison Falls National Park to see the aforementioned falls. It was a journey and half to say the least, but i made it and it all turned out for the best. As i said before because of the national sport of forcing each other of the road (reading Pete's blog i have just realised that the horn could also be the most important implement in vehicles here) when it comes to road works they can't use cones. So what is thenext best option I hear you ask? Yes speed bumps. Large speedbumps. So for road upgrading for close to 30kms meant accompanying speed bumps every - without exaggeration - 100metres maximum! This in turn meant that for someone (me) sitting on the back axle of an of course totally overloaded matatu (mini van shared taxi) a very uncomfortable hour or so of a 5 hour trip as the driver sought to get accelerate to top speed in those 100 metres before slamming on the brakes and a huge spine realigning shudder!
After arriving in Masindi - a bit of a one stop town that acts as an entrance to the falls I in true Johnny style faffed about for just long enough to nearly miss a date with the Chimpanzees. Fortunately i stumbled across the Australian lady who runs the Kaniyo Pabidi Reserve and i mentioned to her I was thinking of trekking the chimps the next day or the day after only to be informed that they were full for the next two days but if I left that minute I would make the 3pm trek. Note the time was about 2.45pm and therefore I had to somehow manage to cover 30km of dirt road in about 10 mins. Cue frantic rush (me?) to hire Boda Boda and a glorious spin basking in the afternoon sunlight through the Northern Ugandan countryside with the wind blowing in my face and all that! So obviously I arrived at nowhere near 3pm (me?) and was totally convinced i had missed the trek. Thankfully African time saved me! More than that I was the only person on the trek which meant a personal tour guide. Cue the first day of the now pretty regular afternoon downpours. For the next two hours of the trek it literally pissed non stop, the chimps (supposedly being 98% of human intelligence) arent so slow and were having non of the rain and all I got to do when we finally trekked about 6 of them down was watch them hunch underneath any kind of shelter they could find and go "sod this for a game of soldiers". Still very cool to see them, not so cool coming back in the boda boda in the now torrential rain. The 45 min journey turned into a 1.5 hr trip back with a few slips including a team work save that resulted in us teetering on the brink of a quite overflowing stream! Cant begin to imagine how much fun we woud have had pulling the bike out of that. Eventually got back to the "hotel" and both myself and the driver legged it for hot showers (he only had a t-shirt on!). Never thought I would be cold and miserable in Africa but there you go!
The next day I tried to catch a bus/anything to Paara - the HQ of the park - but obviously to no avail so another boda boda for 79km through the park which really was amazing this time,views were unreal - a motorbike really opens up the view 10 fold compared to car/van. And arrived very coincidentally as a NYC artist and an Espagnol guy working for an MEP in Brussels were truing to organise a game drive and visit to the falls. They were new enough to africa and were getting very frustrating with "African time" and the African way which was pretty funny. We got sorted anyway and headed of on my first game drive of the trip - how exciting! Despite a not incredibly interested tour guide we did manage to see a good few african elephants, giraffes, zebra, gazelles of every variety and a few brooding water buffalo.
The falls themselves (see attached photo) are truly majestic - a place where the mighty Victoria Nile is forced to aueeze through a 6 metre gap. This, not surprisingly based on the utter size of the river, results in the most powerful falls in the world. Spectacular indeed.
Another early start the next morning to head back to down to Kampala to meet up with Dominic again and the new recruits. They were to be 6 volunteers from a British Universty so I thought i'd meet them before they headed south. Frikking Queens University! Infact one of the girls was from a little village/parish about 10 miles from Cookstown. Ridiculous! Wished them on their way and said goodbye (for now to Dominic) and went off to organise my overnight bus to Nairobi to start the tour. Booked up! For a week! D'oh! Needing to be there in two days i checked a few other companies only to be more or less laughed away! So a hastily arranged flight resulted, was way more expensive but having now experienced the roads from Nairobi to Kampala twice I would have to say that may have been a good call, as there would have been next to no sleep! So onwards to phase 2 for me: Gorillas, Rafting the Nile, Masai Mara and the Serengetti
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